The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills Recap: Walk of Shame

One of the most embarrassing things that I’ve ever seen on prime-time television is Lisa Rinna practicing her runway walk with her daughter Delilah. I can’t quite figure out what it is about it that makes me so uncomfortable. Maybe it’s because it’s in the hallway of the hotel where, at any moment, someone could come out of their room or off the elevator to find these two women stomping up and down in a semi-private place and Lisar would just laugh her face off and say, “Oh, sorry. My daughter is walking in her first fashion show tomorrow and we wanted to practice her walk. Oh my God, this is so embarrassing.”

Everyone, including that unwitting person, would know that Lisar wasn’t really embarrassed at all. She would just be happy to have another reason to tell this person that her daughter was going to be a fashion model. Though she would be clutching this person’s arm in an attempt to be relatable and disarming, this person would know he has to ask which show her daughter is walking in and have to pretend to be interested in this modest accomplishment that he has been needlessly thrust into. So he would ask and Lisar would respond, “Termy Hurlfurger.” (Credit for noticing the very odd way that Lisar says the designer’s name goes to Philip Bump, a serious journalist and the Real Housewives Institute’s liaison to the SAPNQ — Straight and Presumably Not Questioning — community.)

While the walking was embarrassing, it might have just been a way for Lisar to atone for alienating Yolanda Bananas Foster, the mother to Delilah’s idol Gigi Hadid, who was both opening and closing this Timmy Himmelfarber show. As Delilah and The Other One point out, their mother has more drama than either of them do. These are teenage girls. Teenage girls are native to drama like fish are to water or salesmen are to strip clubs. Having a teenage girl tell you that you have too much drama is like a meth head telling you that you talk too fast.

I love that St. Camille of Grammer has been around a lot this season, just dropping into the proceedings to offer a little bit of guidance and a well-trained side-eye, just like she popped in to have lunch with Lisar in New York. We get just enough Camille, because every time I see her on the screen I gasp and I’m happy and I remember the springtime when the daffodils pop out of the soil and you want to grab the butt of every boy you see jogging in the park. It’s also amazing because St. Camille always has the right advice. She tells the women how to behave like human beings, which is something they surely forgot when their souls were condensed down and pressurized into those giant diamonds they hold in the opening credits.

While she gives Lisar good advice about what to do about Kim and Eden and Kyle — she basically tells her to leave them all alone — I could not handle the way they were talking about their daughters being in a fashion show. “Is this her first walk?” “It is her first walk!” “Does she know how to walk?” “I don’t know.” “What if she doesn’t know how to walk?” “I’m so nervous of her walk.” It’s like the two of them are talking about a couple of invalids or total idiots or something. It’s just a fashion show. It’s not like it takes tremendous skill. Knitting a scarf, baking a cake, or opening a plastic tub of Cheez Ballz you bought at Costco is harder than walking in a fashion show. I’m sure these very bright young women will be fine.

While Lisa and Camille are having lunch in New York, Dorit is having lunch in Beverly Hills with her husband, PK, a wet pair of socks you have to put back on. Their son, Jagger, who is absolutely adorable, is having a hard time learning how to speak. They’re not so concerned about that, though. They’re worried about the kind of accent he’s going to have. Considering his mother sounds like Madonna doing an imitation of her Guatemalan maid and his father sounds like a Mary Poppins fart, his first word will probably sound like that of a Senegalese taxi driver.

All of this is just prelude, however. Since we are watching an episode of The Agency Presents: House Hunters International, A Tyler Perry Film, they’re all going to Mexico to celebrate the opening of a new office of the Agency in Punta Mita. At the airport to leave for the trip, Erika Jayne is dressed like she’s in the chorus of Running Man: The Musical, Dorit is inexplicably carrying a hat box, and PK, an overstuffed burrito covered in Steve Bannon’s rosacea, is wearing a sweatshirt the exact color of ball skin.

Speaking of Erika Jayne, I haven’t mentioned her that much in the recaps this season because she’s not really doing much of anything. And by “not really doing much of anything,” what I mean is that she is being absolutely perfect. I live for every single second of Erika Jayne. When I see her, I just go into my happy place like the Klonopin just dissolved and there are three episodes of the Great British Bake Off on the DVR. Every outfit, every syllable, every outsize “on the verge of death?” reaction just makes me fall a little bit more in love with her.

My two favorite Erika moments this episode are both during the Jet Ski ride. The first is when the guys setting her up to ride ask if she’s ready and she just sits in the saddle of that Jet Ski, confident and beautiful, and says, “I’m ready. Let’s go,” with this air that’s both nonchalant and utterly privileged all at the same time. It’s like she was saying, “I am here for fun. I am here to have a good time. If you don’t get me going right this second, I will open the heavens and giant mythological beast will fly down and devour you.”

The second moment is when she talks about how you can’t be scared of a Jet Ski and makes this little wimpy whine of a silly girl holding onto the handles and screaming while going two miles an hour. Erika Jayne is not here for your silly, weak-ass, girly bullshit. She is here to go full throttle or not go at all, and that is why I love her. She has an unquenchable lust for life, coupled with a severe distaste for bullshit that just puts all the rest of the women in just the right place. Erika Jayne has her priorities in order, and none of them has anything to do with getting into a screaming match about some dumb nonsense.

It is so odd when she talks to Kyle in this mansion in Mexico about how they have to savor every moment they get with their busy husbands, but also about how their own lives are blowing up. I’ve been loving Kyle and Erika this season. I think that the meanest trick the devil ever played was making the two most relatable human beings on this show a self-centered fame whore who drives a car worth two college educations and a housewife who spends a majority of her time entertaining homosexuals in YouTube videos while she rolls around in designer thongs. How did this even happen?

If you can’t tell, I’m really trying to avoid talking about Lisar and Eden and what she said about Kyle and all of that crazy nonsense. As soon as Eden blew into Villa Rosa, a giant duty-free shop with a house lodged in its throat, and kept talking about what was going on with her and the Sisters Richards I was already sick of it. I just want Eden to forget about it already because no matter who told her what about whom, she is still holding onto it tighter than me with my last box of Girl Scout cookies. Yes, Lisar got caught saying some stupid stuff about Kyle and Kim and she is talking out of both sides of her mouth. But don’t we all know this is Lisar’s M.O. by now? Is anyone really surprised? Do we really have to care?

No. What do we care about? Everything else. We care about Eileen’s weirdo son zipping himself up in a laundry bag. We care about Lisa Vanderpump roasting Maurice for opening an office in Mexico and never working again. We care about all of Lisa’s dogs, though they are like Tribbles at this point: nameless, multiplying, and probably up to no good. We care about Erika Jayne, in her sunglasses right out of a Whitesnake video as she goes out on the balcony of her room in Mexico with a sarong tied around her waist while the moist, salty wind chills her still-damp bathing suit and tickles the tassel of her ponytail. She stands there surveying this giant house, looking out over the ocean and into the sky with the clouds cartwheeling across the wide expanse. She thinks about how her whole life she’s dreamed about this moment, this unremarkable moment between incidents. Those are the best moments of all, when she’s alone with herself, the wind, and the slight sting of chill that reminds her that it’s a struggle to stay alive.